I would have to suggest Golden Boy, one of my favourite shows ever. And it's really short. I highly recommend the English dub. I like it so much that I haven't even bothered trying the Japanese version.

I was saying early on this anime glowed with potential, and while the series more or less was a first season, it was otherwise excellent in almost every way. It was funny, atmospheric/worldly, had solid character development and tense, pulpy action. It sometimes edged into mature territory which was unusual for a "shounen" (?) title like this, in the modern era.

My only complaint is something raised in Episode 11 that was confusing. I can't clarify it without spoilers.

I highly, highly recommend this series. I can't give it a "Masterpiece" just because I don't think it aspires for the completeness of a true magnum opus, but it's about as super solid as any action-adventure you could ask for in this day and age, and it isn't one of those isekai derivatives.

With this out of the way, I'm now primed to begin Cells at Work as this was a road block to me downloading it. Yosh!

I recently read the manga and I thoroughly enjoyed it and it's seems to still be a monthly ongoing series. It's basically about the story of a fantasy setting where one dude is super good at killing goblins and intends to do nothing else, even at the mockery of other adventurers who think goblins are beneath them.

It also seems to make a lot of visual references to other series, like one guy looks a bit like Guts from Berserk, a sorceress from Dragon's Crown, a guy who looks like Lancer from Fate Stay/Night, and ton of D&D tropes.

The art is pretty well done, but definitely NSFW due to some graphic violence and occasional rape.

It's also getting an anime series this October apparently. So something to look out for.

In other news, the new Code Geass will apparently be a movie, not third season. Not sure how I feel about that.

It's good that others are reading it! The rape winds down from the early chapters, because it was necessary to introduce the readers to what kind of a scenario the Goblin Slayer is dealing with.

The manga is really well done. The prequel, Year One, is not quite as well done because it's way more casual and overt with the RPG references. When GS submits his application to the Adventurer's Guild, it's actually a character sheet.

Sumika Sumire: I discovered tonight that, since Kaisa and I were last aboard the Sumika Sumire train, two new tankoubons have come out! Last time we had access through 8 and 9 was the latest out; this time, we have access through 10 and 11 is the latest out. Book 8 ended in an AMAZING climactic place, so I refreshed myself on that and pressed on through 9 just now. Half-reading, half-skimming, the book introduces a third dude in the mix, and our first villainous bishie. Looking forward to reading Book 10 in the near future, but hoping 11 might be where we wrap things up for good. I don't want the series to jump the shark, and the plot arc introduced in 9 definitely feels like it could lead us to that if we're not careful.

Sumika Sumire: I read Volume 10, I was writing a huge post, and I accidentally backed up a page in my browser. Too tired and too frustrated to start over. Suffice to say, in brief: Volume 10 is pretty good, ends on a huge cliffhanger, the end-game is in sight, and it's now two simple questions of 1) "Will she or won't she?" wind up happily ever after with 2) "Who?"

Goblin Slayer's first episode felt dull. And this is from source material that involves brutal violence and rape. It really felt like they were doing the bare minimum of work to transfer the manga into an anime. Even so, the manga pages felt more animated than the actual animation. The newbie party felt so stiff and boring and generic. They cut out their short backstories and the camera angles were horrible.

I don't think it was cheap so much as the director failed to capture the manga's tone shift, where a story that starts off like Dragon Quest slowly transitions into Doom, and the atmosphere of overpowering dread wasn't allowed to settle on the audience. As you articulate too much was simplified for time or budget or whatever - the original chapter ended on Goblin Slayer appearing, and in this episode the party is wiped and priestess is saved. The first volume of the manga had PERFECT pacing, to the point that I don't think anyone would be torn up with it ending on that chessboard scene. You know the one.

It would have been better or make light of Priestess' cautionary comments rather than to focus in on them. And when Goblin Slayer appears, we don't know if he's friend or foe because he's so intimidating.

There was certainly some good artwork in the episode, but the direction was sabotaged by the CGI goblins, CGI Goblin Slayer and that stiffness.

If you think this was bad, Kumo was treated to an even worse mangling. Slime Tensei also looks low budget-ish but it managed to get around that with an amorphous slime that didn't need to be on-model because it doesn't have any endoskeleton.

A zombie idol group. Uniting dead young idols from across time periods. Mamoru Miyano is The Producer. Such originality! Such boldness! An idea that presents itself in the mind eye in IMPACT typeface!

Fall 2018 is shaping out to be the most hype anime season in 10 years. Like I can't remember the last time there was 5+ watchable shows in a single season. Most seasons is 0-1. A good season is 2-3 with one primal throwing its weight around and 0-2 more mundane shows proving themselves able time killers.

Yet the season that gave keeps on giving. And I haven't even started Golden Kamuy season two yetttt.

Zombie-chans have been a thing for the past 2-5 years now, with recent growth in popularity over the last 1-2. It's not my thing, and it remains a niche market, but it's definitely there. It evolved out of two very rather unrelated genres:

the monster girl genre, which typically takes various monsters from legend and turns them into cute, sexually-appealing anthropomorphized women

the zombie genre, which typically is rather dark and violent, a combination of other genres including rape, corruption, snuff, and gore

The latter has very, very little crossover with the former. The former is cute and largely inoffensive. The latter is dark, violent, and disgusting -- all properties its fans adore it for. I think the widespread appeal of monster girls, coupled with the mainstream disgust with zombie porn, wound up leading to this outcome where we found ourselves with what I've here referred to as "Zombie-chan", a moe zombie girl who has all of the (more) mainstream appeal of a monster girl with all of the (more) niche appeal of a zombie. It takes what is formerly dark and violent and repurposes it as comedic and adorable. "Aww, her head fell off! " "d'aww, she's worried that she might smell bad on the first date! " "Awwwwwww, she loves him so much she's resisting the urge to bite into his head. "

It's not for me. ^_^; It's definitely for the niche, niche intersection of people who are both 1) fans of monster girls and 2) fans of zombies.

A recent example I can find that demonstrates this new subgenre is [おめがはうす] ゾンビになったあのコを救えるのは俺の精子だけっ！ from September. At its heart it's still a zombie porn story, with the typical shambling male zombies and the rape and the snuff. But its presentation oozes the new "zombie-chan" craze: everything about the female character designs is cute, there is nothing overly brutal (and in fact a lot of what's shown is merrily consensual), the zombie-fied girls seem very happy to be zombies, and ... really, just take a look for yourself at some work-safe samples:

As you can see, these are not your grandpa's zombies. These are waifus, born and raised to appeal to otaku moe sensibilities. Visually, they're more Violet Beauregard than they are zombies. No skin peeling off. No missing body parts. Excellent posture. Full retention of mental acuity from before they were turned into zombies. They blush. They get aroused. These are only zombies in the strictest sense of "the author tells me so".

As for the plot of this particular piece, well, you might be able to discern it from the title. "My semen is the only thing that can save that girl who turned into a zombie!" Typical.

Almost every anime takes roughly two chapters of a manga to produce a single episode of an animation. I don't really know if they had enough material for a 1:1.

I don't know yet if it's an issue of direction and cinematography fully. I mean, can the director really be so dumb to hide the faces of two speaking characters in a scene? It really felt more like they didn't want to animate that scene rather than it was directed by a guy in his backyard making a Sasquatch film.

But yes, I fully agree. It's not ugly (if we exclude the CGI) and the source material is very strong so it'll still hook people on that on top of the shock factor from the brutality.

After a lot of searching and filtering through "Reaction" reviews of GS, I did find a lot of people say this has been pretty MEH. No hook and slow paced. Doesn't seem like there's many people who have read the LN or manga though.

Almost every anime takes roughly two chapters of a manga to produce a single episode of an animation. I don't really know if they had enough material for a 1:1.

But is it actually a manga adaptation?

Kumo's anime is a clear adaptation of the light novel because it uses the light novel artwork and also includes the utterly obnoxious elf land side story. The manga improved the narrative by cutting out the stupid side story while also improving the artwork. The decision to go that route doomed the anime, since each rewrite (manga > light novel > web novel) has improved on the story.

GS' manga artwork is much more in line with the light novel's. In fact, I did not know Year One and Brave New World were actually drawn by different people, because that's how close in style all the artists are. The manga likewise cut out a lot of information from the light novel, notably the meta commentary, but also minute details about the party before the wipe.

Adding the backstories for newbie wizard, newbie fighter and newbie warrior would have added at least 3 minutes of screen time to the episode, in the absence of anything else. I think with a full OP and ED that makes it very possible to fit the first chapter to the first episode.

Remember, Goblin Slayer is about killing goblins. There's nothing thrilling about that, it's more akin to vermin extermination. Slaying the goblins feels good because of how vile they are, but without establishing that emotional connection, it's just empty violence.

So rushing through the first chapter which is supposed to set the groundwork for why you should hate/fear the goblins, just to rush to the action (and then rushing said action), is a complete misunderstanding of the story's appeal.

One of the best (if not THE) best anime from last year continues to deliver. Although last season was mostly action, there were hints of depravity and tense humour that this episode featured in full. To the point that it was a little tough to unpack at first, but I welcome the quick exposition.

Of all the titles this season, this is the super heavyweight. I have high expectations that I hope will continue to be exceeded!

Slime Tensei

This episode was good but makes me butthurt that Kumo got the short end of the stick. The slime is charming, but not as fun as Kumo, and the whole monster hunting bit.

Kumo, minus the elf plot, is like The Secret Lives of Pokemon. Slime skipped through all that part which was a huge chunk of the appeal. I'm also disappointed the slime has pretty much fully detached itself from Japan.

As part of a phone engineering project, I'm trying to calibrate my batteries by draining them all the way...and that involves playing Pokemon movies for 14+ hours. So I figured, why not watch some of the ones I haven't seen yet?

ROD is surprising. I thought Darkrai was the villain, but he's actually the hero. The "villains" are Dialga and Palkia, fighting for no reason. They have no real reason to have a rivalry or be angry at one another, unlike Groudon and Kyogre who have mutually opposing goals and are different class of animal (Groudon = reptile, Kyogre = mammal). D+P are both dragons and are possibly siblings. Their beef made no sense.

Darkrai also clearly died, and came back to life somehow. I didn't care for that twist, having him stay dead would have been much more impactful.

It's also weird to see the (outdated) interpretation of Darkrai, able to sprout legs and talk. Although he's so reticent to talk it causes problems for the characters. Some of the music from this movie was reused for the famous The Semi-Final Frontier! episode of the main series.

The movie feels largely unexplained like not detailing too much about Goudy or Alicia, what Alicia meant to Darkrai, and other things. Alice was a pretty useless damsel-in-distress.

Baron Alberto seemed like he was going to be a big pain but turned out to be Diet Gaston. He was also amusing as Lickilicky.

Eh, 6/10. It's definitely inferior to ICY. But it's better than all the Kalos movies. It's also cool being introduced to Dawn for the first time and seeing all these Pokemon of hers I've never seen before, like Pachirisu and Lopunny's pre-evo. I'm already very familiar with her Oshawott, but that's the only one.

It's only episode 4 of Goblin Slayer and boy is it boring. Which is weird because these same chapters of the manga were so exciting. The anime just seems to do everything in the least interesting style. Repeating the exact same animation for the summoning of the Dragontooth Warrior.

The fireball was dull, the only real aftereffect was a goblin corpse turning into jerky. No scattered flames in the room or anything like that. The room just exploded and it looks the same. Like, they could have made the scene more epic with flames around the room. It would have changed the mood from the dark and dull blue hue to signify the ease of handling the goblins and contrast it with the bright and intense orange from the light of the flames in the room to show how intense the battle with the Ogre is. So much of the show looks and feels stiff. The fight uses so many still shots and even the climatic finale was so boring.

And of coarse the random CGI. I really thought the Ogre was going to be fully CGI as well as his fireball, but no. Just randomly Goblin Slayer is CGI and absolutely nothing else for no reason. It feels like watching an episode of Justice League except randomly Superman is replaced by Bob from Reboot. Like what the fuck? Do they really save any money using that CGI? Cause it certainly doesn't look better. It just make those scenes stand out and add nothing to the scene.

And it's not only the dull animation either. The voice acting just drags down the show too. I know Goblin Slayer is blunt, even the Lizardman feels uninteresting in his tone. He talks respectfully, but without much emotion or urgency despite being in the middle of the battle to cast his summon spell.

If they mess up the next arc, I'll probably drop the series. And they are blazing through the chapters so quickly.

I ended up watching Seishun Buta Yarou wa Bunny Girl Senpai no Yume wo Minai or just simply Bunny Girl Senpai in my infinite boredom. There's only like 4 episodes so far, but I enjoyed it.

A comment about the show was "they took the worst parts of haruhi and bakemonogatari and somehow came up with something decent." Well, that piqued my interest. I'll probably post about this show some more if it keeps up.